


Release

by copper_dust



Category: Rent - Larson
Genre: Drama, F/F, F/M, Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-22
Updated: 2014-11-22
Packaged: 2018-02-26 13:30:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2653730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/copper_dust/pseuds/copper_dust
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Things are coming apart. Maureen undergoes a procedure and watches Mark struggle to deal with Roger and April's addiction at the cost of neglecting his own personal life. Pre-Rent.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Release

**Author's Note:**

> This story is set 15 months before the events of canon, not three.

_Pity me that the heart is slow to learn_

_What the swift mind beholds at every turn_

-Edna St. Vincent Millay

_THROUGH THE SCREEN_

When the anaesthesia wore off, Maureen felt slightly nauseous but not entirely ill. She was parched, and asked for a glass of water. A nurse brought her a paper cup and she felt better after having a drink. The nurse was a matronly Hispanic woman with bloodshot hazel eyes and a stout belly wrapped in teal scrubs. She asked Maureen if she was doing okay and to her own surprise, Maureen said yes.

“Did it go alright?” Maureen wondered hesitantly.

“Yes, of course.”

“So, I’m...”

“All done,” said the nurse. “It’s finished.” She seemed just as glad as Maureen, as if she had shared Maureen’s anxiety and trepidation beforehand and was pleased to have it over with.

She gave Maureen a final check-over, and allowed her to change back into her street clothes behind a screen. Her legs felt tender as she pulled up her jeans; her t-shirt seemed to have a different texture. It was strange. The parts of her body that, three months ago, had ceased to be her own became hers again; but they were altered and numb. She felt as though her body had been handed back to her wrapped in grainy plastic, and upon unwrapping it, she discovered that it was no longer the right size.

She pulled up her socks and smoothed them out. Her boots still fit right, a small comfort.Through the screen, she watched the blurred shadows of the nurses.

 

_IT HAD ALWAYS BEEN HIS_

He was reading a newspaper in the waiting room, a sunny enclave with dated fern-patterned wall paper and frosted windows. Given the time that had elapsed, she guessed he had made his way through the front section, entertainment, maybe even world events. If she stood in the doorway and remained silent, she could watch him make his way through style, the book review, even travel. Then he would discard sports and automobiles and find a magazine-- something clever, political. It would not be Reader’s Digest or those ‘dining-and-decorating’ magazines, dogeared, thumbed through by anxious thirty-year-olds and their supportive girlfriends (of which two sat nearby, looking plump and uneasy.) His eyes would slide across the page, his brows furrowed slightly. She imagined his glasses greasy and askew. He could read all afternoon and not notice the time.

“I’m done.”

“Uh...” he looked up, folding the paper away. “You okay?”

“Yeah.”

“How’d it go?”

“Fine.” She felt a bit dizzy from the after-effects of the anaesthesia, and was experiencing, as promised, a bit of cramping but nothing to be concerned about.

Mark swung his bag around his shoulder and pulled himself out of the little chair with a sigh of discomfort. He stretched to his full height and then looked her up and down, appraising. She looked directly at him, anticipating the full ten seconds it would take for him to meet her gaze. When he finally did, she took him by the wrist and led him out the door, down a hallway of doors fixed with medical plaques and into the rickety elevator.

He pressed G.

“I picked up a few pamphlets. Just in case--”

“Mark, don’t,” she said. “I know how to take care of myself.”

They waited. The elevator was ancient and wood-panelled and foul-smelling. They felt young, wooden-faced and sweaty. Maureen loosened her scarf and tapped her fingers sporadically on the railing. She knew her lack of rhythm was distressing him. He knew she was doing it on purpose and smiled at the floor. It was their game. The rhythm of annoyance and of learning to expect it.

“I guess you want to take the bus” he said. “I guess you don’t want to walk.”

“Yeah,” she said. “I guess this is the sort of occasion for which you could spare a few quarters and pay for a token.”

Mark nodded as they stepped out of the elevator. A bank of mailboxes ran the length of the hall, up to a steel-barred glass door that opened out onto 16th Street, where they walked into a cool gust of wind.“I guess you want me to carry your purse,” he said.

She thrust it into his arms without turning her head, and said, “I guess you want to go home and take a nap. I guess you want some rest.”

“I guess so,” he said. “I guess you do too.” And she touched his arm and they fell into a silence. The wait for the bus was cold and windy. A cluster of men, young and old, stood smoking on the corner. Embers glowed through fingerless gloves. Maureen shoved her hands in her leather pockets. A few weeks ago it had been a bright blue-and-gold September, the kind where warm corduroys tucked into leather boots were just for show. Now, the sky had turned cloudy and dark. Even the weeds in the pavement, nasty resilient things, were giving up.

The bus arrived, mercifully empty. She sat down a seat away from Mark, who glanced into his bag at the paper, seeming to decide against taking it out. The seats vibrated while the bus meandered slowly through late-afternoon traffic. Her cramps were getting worse, but she leaned her head back onto the windowsill and found herself falling asleep.

Back at the loft, April was eating cold tomato soup out of the can. Her eyes were glazed over and half-shut. Her hair was a mess, a peroxide blonde spider web streaked with pink and grey. Maureen and Mark both glanced over at her, smiling slightly to themselves. Their eyes followed the same track: over April, the dribbles of soup on the table, Roger’s stack of unpaid bills, Collins’ boxers inexplicably on the floor in front of the sofa and the discarded pile of origami birds April had obsessively folded one of night in a drug-addled stupor.

“I think I’ll go lie down,” said Maureen. “I’m not feeling well.”

“Alright.” Mark took her coat and hung it up for her as she left for the bedroom. The door shut with a soft click. Maureen eyed the knob, wishing there was a lock, and stood before Mark’s mirror. She used it more than he did, but it had always been his, as the bed and the desk and chair were. He was here first, and Roger. She always had the sense that she was living there on borrowed time, on good will. She was a guest.

Maureen rubbed her eyes, pushed her hair back and looked into the mirror. Her reflection was unexpectedly pretty, flushed from the cold and porcelain pale. She was a matryoshka doll. Her parts fit inside each other, each one decreasing in size and detail. And now the littlest one was gone and inside her was a small, hollow space.

 

_HER SWEET TOOTH_

   She woke up a few hours later when Mark pushed her gently to make room for himself. She rubbed her eyes and glanced at the digital clock; it was only 7:30 p.m.

“I’m tired,” he said in explanation. “I’ll probably get up later to have dinner. It’s been a long day.”

“Oh,” she said.

“It’s Roger,” he continued. “He fucked up again.”

“How is that possible?”

“I don’t know,” said Mark. “He called me from a pay phone...he didn’t even know where he was. I had to call his friends to find out and then go take him home.”

Maureen braced herself for the inevitable. “Well, where was he?”

“Two blocks away.” And he closed his eyes, sighing. She felt his shifting in bed; rearranging his weight on their uneven mattress. A bed spring was broken but neither of them knew how fix it, and so they let it be. It was not exactly comfortable, but lately, very little about adulthood was.

As soon as his breathing deepened and she knew he was asleep, she left the room and shut the door behind her. Roger was sleeping on the couch, on his face the dried evidence of a nosebleed. Across from him, the TV warbled dully, its infomercial-bright colours reflecting back on the windows. Resisting the urge to kick his face, she swallowed 4 Tylenols with a gulp of orange soda and then washed her mouth out, feeling gross. The boys had the worst taste in drinks she could think of. Anything cherry or vanilla-mint or extra caffeinated eventually found its way into their fridge.

Maureen slipped on her coat and boots. Adding an extra pair of moth-eaten pink mittens, she left and thudded down the stairwell, letting each foot fall heavy on the steps.

She went for a coffee at some diner next door to the place they rented videos from. The cramps had subsided to a dull ache, but now her head was throbbing. Still, she felt better. Something was gone, some emotion that couldn’t explain itself, but could distract her from eating, sleeping, breathing, living. In its absence, Maureen felt a glow of relief, beginning in her belly and spreading outward to the tips of her mittens and the soles of her boots.

She ordered a coffee and a piece of pie. She added several spoonfuls of sugar the coffee, just the way she liked it. Mark always teased her for her sweet tooth. He drank his coffee black, and preferred toast over pie. She called him an ascetic, an abstemious monk.

“Maureen!”

She looked up.

“I had no idea you’d be here! Honestly...” Joanne sat down across from her. Her dreadlocks were pulled back in a neat ponytail, her face plump and rosy brown from the cold. She slid her leather gloves off and placed them on the table alluringly. Maureen smiled despite herself.

“How’ve you been?” asked Joanne sincerely.

“Uh...” she laughed. “I’ve been better. You?”

Joanne rolled her eyes. “Work’s killing me. I’ll probably get some time off for Christmas, maybe go to skiing with my family.”

“You’re so lucky,” said Maureen. “I’ve got to stay back and serve coffee to strangers. Oh, and keep my idiotic cousin from getting arrested again.”

“How’s that community service going?” asked Joanne. “He anywhere close to finishing?”

“I don’t ask. He fucking better be.”

“You must be under a lot of stress,” sighed Joanne. She looked genuinely concerned. It was a facial expression Maureen hadn’t seen in a long time.

“You alright?”

“Oh,” Maureen said. “Yeah. I mean, I’m just a little tired.”

Joanne’s smile faltered. Maureen felt something in her tip over.

“I should probably go,” she said quickly. “I just stopped in. I mean, and I’m finished. So I should get--”

“Of course,” Joanne said. “Well, it was nice to...”

“Yeah,” Maureen said. “Yeah, really great. Well, I’ll see you around.” Maureen paid and slipped her winter clothes on hastily. She was almost out the door when Joanne intercepted her. The wind rushed through the open door into the diner. The cashier gave Joanne a dirty look.

“You took my gloves” Joanne laughed. “These are yours, I think.”

She looked at her hands. She was wearing the leather gloves.

“Sorry, I just--”

“No, it’s fine.”

“I wasn’t paying attention.” Maureen smiled sweetly and took off the gloves and offered them to Joanne, who took them gently and slid Maureen’s pink mittens right onto her hands. A long moment passed.

The cashier coughed significantly.

“Bye, Joanne.”

“See you.”

It was freezing outside, but her cheeks were burning. A homeless man saw her grinning and jingled his cup expectantly. She gave him a quarter and strolled leisurely down the two blocks to the loft. The neon lights of a strip club winked as she passed by, and she was sure a mannequin turned his head to watch her cross the street.

 

_AN INNOCENT SPLATTER_

Roger was locked in the bathroom for what seemed like all night. Every few minutes, his retching was interrupted by an innocent splatter and his raspy, heaving breaths. In bed, she watched the digital clock cast a sickly green glow over Mark’s eyelids.

“I don’t know how you can sleep through this,” she murmured.

“I’m awake,” he breathed. Maureen tried to sink deeper into the pillows, to no avail. She shifted onto her stomach, then her back, flipped her pillow over and slid her arms underneath it to feel the cool side. Now her t-shirt had ridden up to her breasts. She pulled it down, and readjusted the covers noisily.

“Maureen,” Mark whispered sharply.

“What?”

“Take an Ambien. Just...stop.”

She opened her mouth but could think of nothing to say. Mark turned away from her and pulled the covers up to his neck. His breathing was rhythmic.

“Mark?” she whispered.

“What?”

She reached over to him in the darkness and found his shoulder blade. His skin was warm through his shirt.

He exhaled softly and she removed her hand, cupping the lingering warmth of his shoulder into her chest.

 

_SUBLIME_

She tripped over a pair of headphones on the way to the fridge, and nearly impaled herself on the corner of the steel table. The refrigerator was ancient, and emitted a loud, vibrating hum  when she opened it. Soy sauce, pickles and a cellophane-covered bowl of hummus. All of her beer was gone.There was nothing in the cupboard but a half empty Mason jar of rice and bag of Monterey Cheese Doritos. She tried the upper shelves of the pantry, where there was often crackers and dried fruit, but nothing was there. Maureen settled on the Kit Kat bar in her purse that the clinic had given her to keep her blood sugar up.

She lay down on the sofa, knocking several misshapen cranes onto the floor. The boxers had since disappeared. Mark and Benny were at work; Collins was AWOL as usual and Roger was out, either rehearsing or injecting flowers into his brain. She had noticed April in hers and Roger’s room, doodling on a piece of foolscap, wearing Roger’s baggy t-shirt backwards. April, with her reference books gathering something slightly worse than dust in a corner under the bed. April who had been eight years old and missing both front teeth when Maureen had bossily announced that they were going to be bus buddies for the whole year. They used to play the gypsy game, where Maureen would take April’s palm and trace the lines with her chipped, purple fingernails and proclaim that April would get married at twenty-two and have five children and be a veterinarian who was very rich, except not as rich as Maureen the famous dancer would be. A veterinarian. April couldn’t even remember to feed herself. And Maureen was too fat to be a dancer now.

She heard a pounding at the door. Nobody but Roger’s bassist, Gavin, knocked like the Gestapo-- particularly when he was pissed off with Roger, which was often. Maureen dragged her ass off the sofa and felt dizzy for a moment, her vision darkening into a reddish blur before clearing into the sight of a halo topped by a mound of gold. No, it was the rim of the plate of nachos, the congealed cheese hardened into a greasy nougat. She hastened to open the door.

“Gavin.”

“Is Roger here?” he asked rudely.

“No.”

“He hasn’t shown up to rehearse for the third day in a row. Where the hell is he?”

“Am I my cousin’s keeper?”

Gavin pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose with the heel of his hand and furled his brow. Maureen felt an immediate ache; Mark did that exactly the same way when he was frustrated. Gavin paused for a  moment and then said, “Tell him if you see him that I’m about ready to kill him. And so is Joe. And give him this”-- he shoved a twenty into Maureen’s hand-- “and remind him now we’re even.”

“What about Phil?” Maureen asked lightly.

“What?”

“He’s not ready to kill Roger?”

Gavin had already dashed halfway down the hall, his guitar case slung heavily across his back, looking like a hobo about to hop a train. “Phil’s a pacifist,” he said unironically. He turned back to the stairs and walked right into Benny, who cursed when Gavin shot him a death glare on his way down the stairs.

“Roger pissed him off again?” he said with a grin.

Maureen sighed and went back into the kitchen. She plugged in the kettle, if only to have something to do. “Aren’t you supposed to be at work, Mr. Account Manager?”

“My boss is at a funeral. He told me to take the afternoon off. Enjoy life, you’re young, the whole nine yards. Not before I got him another bottle of Wild Turkey, though. And a couple of wine coolers, for the girlfriend.”

“Ew.”

“You know how they met?” he said, opening the latch on his briefcase. “She was his daughter’s prefect at Horace Mann. She was captain of the dance team.”

“Stop. I can’t take it,” she laughed. “This is like the opening of a porno.”

“Apparently, they wore matching skorts. Not skirts. Skorts.”

“What’s like a porno?” April appeared in the doorway. Her hair was ungroomed and tangled, her skin grey and pale but she still had that aura-- that grace. Sublime like a thunderstorm, or the silence right after the song.

“Nothing,” said Maureen quickly. “Do you want some tea?” She touched the kettle absentmindedly and jerked her fingers back from the heat.

After a beat-- “No thank you. I’m working.” She held up her hands, tacky with fabric ink. Benny shot Maureen a loaded glance. April looked down at her palms, seeming absorbed as though she had only just realized they were smeared with green. Maureen felt torn between the urge to tug down the tag sticking out of April’s collar and returning to her room to get under the covers. The kettle whistled. She poured hot water into a mug, eyed the nearly-empty cupboard, and poured a second helping into an empty Mason jar. Benny leaned over her shoulder and reached up into a jar of reused tea bags on the top shelf of the cupboard. She could smell his liberal application of cologne.

“You making that gross smoothie stuff?” he asked, his mouth right by her ear.

“No,” said said and ducked out from under his arm and away towards the fridge. “Just tea. And it’s called kombucha, by the way. It’s not a smoothie.”

“Well, we’re agreed on that. It’s nothing like a smoothie,” he said.

“I like kombucha. It tastes nice,” piped up April, who was sitting at the table now. Her head resting on her hands against the table, her hair a swirl of pale pink against the grey of the Village Voice. “Maureen, do you have some?”

“No,” Maureen sighed. “I’m just drinking tea.” She grabbed her jar and headed back to her room grumpily. A pile of damp t-shirts collapsed on her head right before she opened the door. “What the hell was that?”

“They’re for Roger’s band,” insisted April. “I told you. We’re air drying them so the dye can set properly. You have to be careful so they don’t fall off the pipes again,” she added in a tone that Maureen, in her present state of mind, could only interpret as calm condescension.  Condescension from a junkie who had, just 24 hours earlier, eaten cold tomato soup and raw sardines from the can.

“I think she did mention something, actually. . .,” said Benny. He helped April gather up the t-shirts and hurl them up over the pipes in the ceiling. Maureen couldn’t help but notice the annoying way his ass crack showed when he bent over, the way April’s hands quivered clumsily when she attempted to pick up a shirt. The way her knuckles protruded from her pale white fingers.

Maureen stormed inside her room and shut the door. She sat down on the bed. She waited for a whole minute to pass before she moved again, to pull shut the ratty curtains against the noonday light. They weren’t of much use; the paisley glowed golden-red as a finger of light snuck through the space between the curtains and pointed accusingly across the room, illuminating the dust, the floor, the quilt, her thigh. She felt as though she was riveted to a medieval rack which slowly cranked open, spreading her hip bones, stretching the sensitive tissue. At some point, her head found the pillow. She knew she was sweating, but felt cold nonetheless. She couldn’t seem to sleep. The finger of light slowly swept an arc over the floor. This is what it felt like to be an independent person, an adult who did the responsible thing. It felt like a lingering ache in her lower back that pulled her attention downwards, over and over in gentle waves.

She sunk back onto her pillow. The muffled sound of music floated in from the next room. Roger’s room. It was a record; one of April’s. She and April used to listen to ambient music and paint with their eyes closed on giant sheets of newsprint. When was the last time? It was in the loft. It must have been before April lost her brushes. And this was the song, right here. Brian Eno. A whole album of quietude.

Mark walked in and shut the door with a loud creak. She pretended to be asleep. He was opening and slamming drawers, rummaging. He breathed loudly, that familiar sound of his frustration and concentration merging. His facial expression she knew without opening her eyes.

“The fuck…,” he muttered. Her blanket shifted; he was looking under the bed, clawing at nothing. Did he really believe she could sleep through this? Or was this another part of their pantomime? He was either very naive or simply self-centred, drawn inward by tunnel vision. Three years had only narrowed the the possibilities down to these two and Maureen could not decide.

The floorboards groaned, an indication of his manic pacing. “Damn,” he whispered. She felt a trickle of warmth pool between her thighs. But she didn’t want to get up until he was gone. “Rog--” she heard him yell, just as the door slammed shut and muffled the sound. Ten, nine, eight, seven, six. He didn’t seem to be coming back. She cracked open one eyelid. Five, four-- and the door swung open. “Have you seen my wallet?” Mark demanded.

“In your coat pocket,” she said, knowing that he was too frustrated right now to care that she had been pretending to sleep.

“Yeah, it’s there but the thirty dollars is missing!”

“...you had thirty dollars?”

He sighed rudely. “I sold the old mirror.”

“You got thir--”

“It’s got to be Roger,” he muttered. “It’s gotta be. I’m going to fucking--” and the door slammed shut. Five, four, three, two, one. She rolled over reached into the drawer of her nightstand. If he wants to open the door again, so be it, she thought as she peeled off the adhesive strip. But as the glow of the curtains faded and the cramping subsided, the door did not open and she unhooked her bra and finally fell asleep, shifting fitfully as the coverlet absorbed her sweat and her body absorbed what blood could not.

 

_CHEMISTRY, ALCHEMY, MUSIC_

Someone was laughing.

“Oy vey.” Mark’s voice.

“You got the corniest family--”

“Thanks, Collins.”

“Well, congratulations, kid.” Dishes clinked in the kitchen. She heard coughing.

“You know my mom is probably mounting a strategic, tactical assault on the GAP as we speak ,” he said in a mock grumpy tone. He sounded cheerful if tired. Maureen wondered how last night had ended. She heard an echoing dribble. Nobody pissed that loudly but Roger after another night of heavy intoxication. But if he was already up, how late was it? She rolled over onto her side, squinting at the sunlight burning a laser-hot stripe onto her blanket. Mark’s watch was lying on the night-table. Fucking analogue watch. She rubbed her eyes. Almost eleven. She needed a shower as soon as possible, followed by a freezing cold Rolling Rock.

She pulled on a pair of slippers and padded out into the main room, ducking April’s hanging t-shirts and shaking the weird night-time kinks out of her hair. Mark called the main room the Big Room, which she had always found sweet. What was sweet about it she didn’t know. It was one of those things-- chemistry, alchemy, music-- whichever mysterious laws had drawn them together. He was sitting at the aluminum table, typing on the IBM Selectric. He glanced down and their eyes met in the table’s cloudy reflection. They had been riding the subway together, before they were a couple, when she confessed how she loved to stare at strangers without attracting attention by looking at their reflections on the window behind her. And he cringed somewhat and smiled at her and explained how if you could see a person’s eyes in any configuration of reflections, then they could see yours. She was embarrassed and then he said that his optics professor at Brown had explained that you could use it to send a private message to another person in a crowd of other people-- that he had thought of it like a silent telegram. And it had become their own language right then, in the way that things did at that time.

“You heard?” he said flatly.

“Somewhat. I’m taking a shower,” she replied and shuffled off to the bathroom, stepping around the various backpacks on the floor. In the bathroom, she shut the door and peeled off the layers of sweaty clothing. The knob for the faucet was loose and shaky. She turned on the water and used the toilet while she waited for the water to warm. They had a cold-water flat, but Collins had rigged up some magical device that could heat up the pipes somewhat when the knob was turned past forty-five degrees counter-clockwise.

“...the fuck is that?” she heard Roger’s voice, muffled through the door.

“Mark’s...to have...pop-up card...mail.” Either Benny or Collins. The drum-beating thunder of male laughter. Roger’s sarcastic quip, just quiet enough to be unintelligible. She stepped into the water, flinching as it sprayed her goosebumps. Her whole body shuddered in sudden warmth. If she turned up the pressure, the stream became loud enough to drown out any sounds from outside the bathroom. This was how she liked it. The loft’s interior walls were made of inexpensive chipboard and could not insulate any sound. When they felt discrete, she and Mark would put on a record or wait until they were home alone, but nobody in the loft was discrete anymore and it seemed as though her household  consisted of a web of delicate intimacies and disappointments between people who no longer cared enough to put on a veneer of civility or even a pair of pants.

She dried off and tenderly examined her body with a hand mirror. There were instructions that had to be followed in pamphlets handed to her by Mark. It occurred to her that if she could see her cunt in the mirror, it could see her and they could wink at each other and have little inside jokes and she laughed at the double entendre.

Maureen towelled off back in her room and eavesdropped at the twin conversations taking place through the walls. To her right, in Roger and Aprils’ room:

“No, I do like. I love it,” April murmured lazily.

“Really?”

“It’s different. I like that. Why don’t you...sing that for me...again?”

“I...fuck, I already forgot.” Laughter.

In front of her room, through the door:

“--over the moon with all that stuff.”

“Man, you got a real American family. Two kids and a garage and all that.”

“...me the Sprite,” Mark mumbled.

The brown stain on Mark’s bureau was spilled coffee that had permanently stuck the Polaroid of Maureen in her old Halloween costume to the desk. She went as forest nymph that year, before she and Mark were dating. The costume was intended to make 18-year-old Maureen sexy but not in an obvious way. He later confided that he had in fact found her costume sexy, but in an obvious way.

“Mmm. You’re fuzzy.”

“You’re smooth,” Roger said. Maureen cringed. A moment later, “Really smooth.”

“I think I have to go in to Scarsdale on Sunday night for the ‘official’ announcement.”

“You bringing the shiksa girlfriend?”

“Well…” She could visualize his facial expression to within a micrometre. “Maybe. I don’t know. Yes? I don’t think the shiksa girlfriend wants to come, to be quite honest.”

“--tickle me like that. Please. Pleeease.” An ambivalent noise somewhere between the rippling of sheets and exhaling of breath.

“Have you asked her? Damn, did you finish the pickles?”

“Nah, it must have been Benny.”

“Sorry...I’m just half-asleep here.”

“Not Roger? Doesn’t he go through that stuff like pills?”

April’s lilting whisper” “Me too.”

“He used to. Now Roger just goes through pills like pills,” Mark said darkly.

Maureen realized she had been standing still, fully dressed, for at least a minute. She glanced at the clock by her bed. It was earlier than she had thought; Maureen was hoping she would be so late for work that there would be no point in going and she could call her very kind and perverted manager and plead sick and then eat a croissant hidden in her and Mark’s secret stash;  and then she could wrap herself in sympathy like the olive-green fish netting of her forest nymph wings. But she could not, in waking conscience, skip out on the fifty-six dollars she sorely needed. And it had become clear that Mark was avoiding her, or at least the invisible fumes of female sexual guilt she emanated.

She grabbed the half-muffin left in a plastic bag by the refrigerator, ignoring his gaze at her back. Collins was watching the Mets; she could hear the narcoleptic drone of the announcers leaking from the TV.

“Damn! Fuck fuck fuck fuck,”Collins muttered. “Damn.”

She could feel the parting of the sea of tension, a soft buzzing in her brain that meant Mark was about to speak to her.

“You’re going to work?” he asked softly.

“Yeah,” she turned around. His hair was sticking up in all the wrong places and there were greenish bags under his sleep-encrusted eyes.

“You want me to walk you?”

“It’s fine. You look tired.”

He glanced furtively at Roger’s door. “I had to--,” he hesitated. “It was a long night.”

She felt something weaken inside her. “Talk later?”

“Yeah.” He gave her a small, tender grin. She found herself approaching him, standing over his chair and cupping his head in her hands, one palm over each temple. She kissed his greasy hair, warm and damp with sweat. He took her hand in his, and whispered, “It wasn’t him. It was April.”

She swallowed and he looked up at her. Far outside their private bubble, commercials flickered on and off. A chorus of children sang a jingle about Hi-C. A siren sounded.

“I’ll go with you. On Sunday,” she murmured.

“You don’t have to--”

“I’m gonna be late,” Maureen said abruptly. Her hand still in his, she squeezed his thumb; he squeezed back and then let go. “Talk later,” she echoed.

He nodded and went back to work as she left. Shrugging on her coat, she looked at her reflection in the metal door and straightened her hood. Behind her shoulder, she caught the blurred smear of cream and blue that was Mark, huddled over the typewriter, flicking the carriage release lever impatiently. Just as he began to look up, Roger and April’s door opened and Roger wobbled unsteadily towards him, one arm raised needily, but Maureen yanked open the door and slammed it shut behind her before she could witness this new day’s comedy punctured, deflating like a warm white balloon into something small and futile, a doll’s husk, dampened.

 


End file.
